Удушье (Choke)

turns down and too much skin makes the eyes look sleepy.

'A damn St. Bernard,' she'd said with the rearview mirror pointed at herself.

She'd got a white T-shirt somewhere she'd started wearing that said Troublemaker. It was new but already had some nose blood on one sleeve.

The other moms and kids all just talked to each other.

The line went on for a long long time. No police were around that you could see.

While they stood, the Mommy said if you ever want to be the first person to board an airplane and if you want to travel with your pet, you can do both, easy. The airlines have to let crazy people carry their animals on their laps. The government says so.

This was more important information to live by.

Waiting in line, she gave him a few envelopes and address la­bels to stick together. Then she gave him some coupons and let­ters to fold and put inside.

'You just call the airline people,' she said, 'and tell them you need to bring your 'comfort animal.''

That's really what airlines call them. It can be a dog, a mon­key, a rabbit, but no way can it be a cat. The government doesn't consider a cat as comforting anybody.

The airline can't ask you to prove you're crazy, the Mommy said. It would be discrimination. You wouldn't ask a blind person to prove they were blind.

'When you're crazy,' she said, 'how you look or act is not your fault.'

The coupons said: Good for one free meal at the Clover Inn.

She said crazy people and crippled people get first dibs on air­line seats, so you and your monkey will be right in the front of the line no matter how many people were ahead of you. She twisted her mouth off to one side and sniffed hard through that nostril, then she twisted the other way and sniffed again. One hand was always around her nose, touching it, rubbing it. She pinched the tip. She smelled underneath her shiny new finger­nails. She looked up at the sky and sniffed a drop of blood back in. Crazy people, she said, had all the power.

She gave him stamps to lick and stick on the envelopes.

The line moved a little bit at a time, and at the window, the Mommy said, 'Could I get a tissue, please?' She handed the stamped envelopes into the window and said, 'Would you mind mailing these for us?'

Inside the zoo were animals behind bars, behind thick plastic, across deep ditches filled with water, and the animals mostly just sprawled on the ground, pulling on themselves between their back legs.

'For crying out loud,' the Mommy said, too loud. 'You give a wild animal a nice clean safe place to live, you give it plenty of good healthy food,' she said, 'and this is how it rewards you.'

The other moms leaned down to whisper to their kids, then pulled them off to go look at other animals.

In front of them, monkeys shook themselves and squirted out spurts of thick white junk. The junk ran down the inside of the plastic windows. Old white junk was already there, splashed out thin and dried to almost see-through.

'You take away their struggle to survive, and this is what you get,' the Mommy said.

How porcupines get off, she said while they watched, was porcupines hump a stick of wood. The same way a witch rides a broom, porcupines rub a stick until it's stinking and gummy with their pee and juice from their glands. After it stinks enough, they'll never leave it for another stick.

Still watching the porcupine riding its stick, the Mommy said, 'And such a subtle metaphor.'

The little boy pictured them letting all the animals loose. The tigers and penguins, and all of them fighting. The leopards and the rhinos, biting each other. The little fuck was really hot about the idea.

'The only thing that separates us from the animals,' she said, 'is we have porno­graphy.' Just more symbols, she said. She wasn't sure if this made us better than the animals or worse.